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When Trump won the Presidency, he did so with 62,985,106 votes. Hillary received 65,853,625 votes. If that isn’t enough, votes cast for others: candidates,Mickey Mouse, and friends of individual voters, totaled 8,261,894(1). Yup, 54 % of voters chose someone other than Trump to be our President. Still, based on the all important input of the electoral college, he is our President. He is not someone else’s President. He is our President.

So, what do we do now? We better recognize that 46 % of voters (including friends of ours) voted for Donald Trump. It does not matter that I don’t understand why. It is enough that they did. Now we must move forward: with dignity, determination and integrity. The same attributes we must expect from Trump and Trump’s supporters.

With that said, we do not need to stand down. If we want to change our leadership, in 2018, 2020 and beyond, we must strengthen our Party and reexamine our role in Trump’s success. How do we do that?

1) We must study ourselves, our party, and our leadership. Were we prepared to wage a 21st century campaign, or were we stuck with 20th century technology and strategies?

2) We must truly examine and reexamine the needs of our constituents. It is essential we truly understand how to most effectively address the world in which we find ourselves.

3) We need to capture the best technology, people and ideas to move forward to serve our nation with awareness and concerns for the interests of others.

4) We must never lose our sense of the uniqueness of this country and our Democracy. While accepting our nation’s and our own foibles, we must always seek the truth, as best we can know it, with integrity, as best we can define it; and with wisdom in determining how best to lead the nation.

5) We must identify and prepare future leaders, i.e. especially those who will take on the challenge of government service at all levels.

6) We must recognize that good government is not something we can focus on a few months every two years, but must be part of our work every day and every month of every year.

As the news continuously focuses on both the protesters and Trump’s “base”, the Democratic Party must focus on awesome responsibility of proving to the 74,114,519 voters who did not vote for Trump that there is a better way to reshape and rebuild this great Democracy, consistent with building a truly better world for us all.

(1) U.S. election atlas.com. It will not surprise you that I cannot verify the accuracy of the above information personally.